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Saturday, 14 May 2016

Fifty years is approximately an effective lifetime, leave out childhood and the deathbed years. One generation. It's a lot of time to fulfill the purpose of life, one might say. Indeed it is a lot of time.

Now, take a broader view. In evolutionary terms, time is measured in million years. One generation is negligible time. Homo-sapiens have existed for about 200000 years. That means we are past 4,000 generations. We, meaning 7 billion of us.

If one day out of my 18250 days (50 years) gets wasted, I get mad. Crazy, isn't it? I completely agree. But the one day is a critical component in the journey of evolution, however miniscule.

Evolution happens, rather the impact of evolution can be seen only after few thousand years. So, as individuals, we have no choice but to accept the direction of evolution as given. That is perhaps what is destiny. It will require millions of people in each of the next scores of generations to cause any directional change. So, if we are headed towards ecological destruction, that is destiny. Destroying ecology to feed our need for food, safety and convenience is embedded in our genetic composition. There is evidence for it - evidence consistently observed across over 70,000 years. Why be in denial mode? The struggle, therefore, is not to save the planet from the greed of man. The struggle is to watch destiny unfold even if it spells destruction. Thestruggleiswithin.

We may want to believe that gift culture or bitcoin will avert the collapse of the economy, that permaculture will reverse the destruction of agriculture, that alternate education will change human behaviour. But inside of the inside, we know the none of this will happen. We know that it is fear, which is making us believe!

What is so wrong with destruction? We accept death of the body, why not extinction of the specie? Let's help each other come to terms with destiny... That'll be some task.